“The creature is viscid enough to dart through the hotel’s narrow plumbing,” said squid abatement expert Erik Pontoppidan. “It surfaces in guests’ bubble baths, coils hapless bathers in its tentacles, and vanishes again in a deadly but invigorating whirlpool.”

So far, no guests have been seriously hurt, though one bather did emerge, wet and dazed, from a bidet three rooms down the hall from his suite.

“In all of these cases the kraken was successfully repelled with a loofah,” Pontoppidan explained.

“But it’s just a matter of time before the aromatics and concentrated nutrients of bath syrups and body butters induce a fatal attack.”

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The expert plans to release the squid’s natural enemies, sperm-whale calves, into the water pipes.

Some guests, however, think Pontoppidan is overreacting.

“I don’t think there’s a real threat here,” said businessman James Hennteye, who mistook the squid’s suction cups for a non-skid applique. “In my case, I think the squid may have saved a life.”